Bunny faced round, his face crimson. "Oh, I say, Jake! That's too bad. I didn't mean to say it, and anyway I can't do any extra time. It's beastly enough as it is."
"I have said it," remarked Jake.
Bunny clenched his hands. "Dash it all, you can't make me!" he said, his voice low and defiant.
"No, no, you can't." Impulsively Maud broke in, her hand through Bunny's arm. "It's ridiculous and tyrannical. I won't have him bullied, Jake. You are to leave him alone."
She spoke with vehemence, carried away by a gust of indignation. But the moment she had spoken, she realized that she had made a mistake.
Jake said nothing whatever. He did not so much as look at her. But he did look at Bunny hard and straight, and in a moment the boy's attitude changed.
He unclenched his hands with a gesture half-shamed, half-deprecatory. "All right, Jake," he said, in a tone of sullen submission; and to his sister curtly, "Shut up, Maud! You always make a mess of things."
With the words he pulled himself from her hold and went within.
She turned to follow him upstairs, but was checked by the knowledge that Jake was entering the house behind her.
He did not speak, but it was certainly not of her own free will that she passed on to the parlour instead. Angry as she was, she yet would have avoided the encounter had it been possible.